This article is the first of a three-part series on the challenges and opportunities associated with using artificial intelligence (AI). In this issue, I will discuss what individuals and groups are doing to mitigate such risks, and where I think our focus should be as we attempt to cope with a new era where AI will affect more people in more powerful ways over time. In a future blog post, I will share my experiences experimenting with AI tools in the context of little-to-no regulation.
Why you should read this article
If you found The Matrix to be a groundbreaking movie and are curious about how we can potentially avoid intelligent “Agents” and “machines” adding chaos to human life, you’ll be interested in this article. The power conferred by AI can be abused, as shown in the prescient 1999 film, and protecting individual rights should be at the center of every conversation concerning AI.
‍Two Sides of the Same Coin
The coin of AI ingenuity has two faces. One challenges the current limitations of human understanding and nudges (pun intended) humanity to an era of prosperity and progress. While, the other face shows the costs of using AI technology. However, there is an actor in this coin toss influencing where the coin will fall and that is regulation.
1. Regulations Promote Responsibility and Positive AI Applications
As Harvard Business Review remarked a few years prior, AI regulation is indeed coming. Despite the challenges involved in regulating AI, Europe has made significant progress by proposing the world’s first regulatory framework by way of the EU AI Act. It aims to ensure that “AI systems used in the EU are safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly. AI systems should be overseen by people, rather than by automation, to prevent harmful outcomes.”
Multiple organizations and initiatives (e.g., Microsoft’s AI for Good, Google’s AI group, AI for Good) have been using AI to predict environmental events, diagnose, monitor, treat and prevent disease, and meet other global issues. For example, AI for Good has partnered with the United Nations to support AI innovation and problem-solving to help meet sustainable development goals. But you don’t need to belong to a FAANG company to make an impact - DeepLearning.AI has also partnered with Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab to teach people how to apply machine learning to practice analyzing and solving global concerns, like climate change. However, this can promote the application of AI to other industries to improve network security, code more efficiently, predict fashion trends, or integrate Internet of Things (IoT) data to predict human behavior.
With research and technical powerhouses like the ones above prioritizing these real-world issues, and collaborating with partners to accelerate advancement, the potential for progress and innovation are essentially limitless.
2. Oversight Protects Society
Regulations matter because potent technology (e.g., deepfakes, data poisoning attacks, adversarial examples, etc.) used irresponsibly or maliciously can result inÂ
significant psychological, behavioral, social, political and economic harm. Corporations, civil advocates, labor organizations and policymakers have been working to find a way to contend with a future where AI will be even more integrated with our lives. United States lawmakers, in collaboration with AI-based companies (OpenAI, Anthropic), have been devising a plan to establish boundaries and rules for using this type of technology. Individual states are also working independently to address related concerns from the lens of consumer privacy laws. Additional legislation will target not only privacy issues, but also how AI can be applied in different contexts, its effect on the labor market, and responsible use.
Areas like consumer privacy and identity protection are often discussed i AI, but economic agency (and preventing economic displacement) is also critical. This echoes Rana Forohaar’s bottom-up perspective on exacting control over AI use. If the COVID pandemic has taught us anything, it is how shifts on a global scale can have lasting, downstream effects on how workers earn their livelihood. Additional emotional stress and inflation have impacted how people behave in the marketplace, and reorienting the focus to this area will also help to preserve people’s psychological and social health in spite of impending changes.
Key Takeaways
- AI regulation is being formalized across the world (led by Europe) and will influence how countries and organizations will adapt to this technological zeitgeist.
- Focus should be placed on promoting economic agency and preventing economic displacement due to job loss secondary to AI.
- Write down how you would like to apply AI in your life to meet your personal needs or complex challenges, ensuring you are noting specific questions you’d like to answer. If you need to learn the fundamentals, consider taking David Malan and Brian Yu’s CS50 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python course.
- Learn how to apply machine learning methods to solve pressing real-world issues by considering DeepLearning.AI’s AI for Good course.
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Additional References
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